Where did the delta striped bass popultaion originate?

Answer:   

Striped bass have been in this area for 125 years.  In 1879,  Livingston Stone, at the recommendation of S.R. Throckmorton of the California State Board of Fish  Commissioners, planted 132 (1 ˝ -3 inches long) striped bass.  Milk cans and rail cars moved these bass from Navesink, New Jersey to the delta near Martinez.  The California Fish Commission had concerns that such a small number of bass might fail to establish.  Therefore, three years later, 300 more East Coast stripers swam out of their milk cans and into lower Suisun Bay. 

Conditions in the Estuary must have been ideal for striped bass and the bass distributed themselves widely and quickly.  Anglers in Sacramento and Stockton saw stripers a few years after the original release. Less than year after the second release, a surprised angler caught a striper in Monterey. Stripers appeared in Tomales Bay and the Russian River in 1890.  In 1893, one striper turned up at Santa Cruz and the following year two more were caught in Los Angeles County.

San Francisco markets were selling striped bass within 10 years of the original release.  In another ten years, the commercial net catch averaged over a million pounds a year.  The State closed the commercial fishery in 1935 due to concerns for the sport fishery. 

Striped bass are one of California’s top-ranking sport fish and 300,000 anglers fish for stripers annually.

This information and more can be found in Skinner 1962.